


The Revenant

by MissVictoriaRose



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Pepper Potts, Brainwashing, Gen, Hydra!Tony Stark, Sort Of, Tony Stark is the new Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier Tony Stark, Zola is alive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-12-23 10:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11988333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissVictoriaRose/pseuds/MissVictoriaRose
Summary: The green fragments on the screen flickered again, this time forming a shape. It’s boxy like an old 8bit computer game from the 80’s. If Tony squinted, and leaned his head as far back as he could, the green shape on the screen kind of resembled a face.“Consider it a sort of… re-coding,” Zola said. “You have been a worthy adversary, Anthony Stark. But Hydra is down six winter soldiers, along with all we lost when Captain Rogers went snooping in places he shouldn’t have been. You will become a worthy replacement for all we have lost.”





	1. Not Alone

There are a few noises Tony Stark can recognize down to his very soul. The hum of electricity is one of them, the guttural shake of a generator kicking on is another. In any other scenario, in any other place, Tony would have found comfort in the noises around him. He would have smiled at the sounds, viewed it as a little bit of home.

These noises don’t make him think of home. The sound doesn’t bring back haunting memories of better times at the lab at the Malibu Mansion. They don’t even remind him of the sharp corners of the lab at the Tower, or his barebones lab at the Avengers Compound in upstate New York.

Right now, these noises are a whisper in Tony’s ear. It’s a warning of danger, that came too late. It’s a brutal reminder that he’s laying on the hard concrete floor of what is supposed to be an abandoned Hydra facility.

Abandoned places don’t have generators that randomly turn on. They aren’t suppose to have electricity humming through its walls.

Tony scrambles to his feet, struggling a bit in the broken plates of his dismantled Ironman suit. The glass shards of the suit’s arc reactor crunch under his metal boot. He looks around him, at the cement walls and concrete floor. Behind him are support beams, with nothing blocking the frigid outside air. He stands there, and he listens.

A heavy door mechanically opens from somewhere deeper inside the silo. The door’s hydraulics squeak telling its history of unused and poor maintenance. Tony hears sets of heavy boots against the metal floor. Then the rubber soles rub against the loose gravel on the ground from the aftermath of the earlier fight. They’re getting closer.

Tony has no weapons. His faceplate is still on the crumpled ground where Rogers had tossed it, and his arc reactor is in pieces. Tony lifts a shaking gloved hand to the ripped hole in the front of his suit. He runs his fingers along the gash line left from Roger’s shield. That, too, is on the ground where Rogers had tossed it.

The jack-booted grunts find him. Six men dressed in tactical gear, armed with assault rifles. They quickly surround him. Left without another option, Tony raises his hands in surrender.

“Out of the suit,” one demands in Russian.

Tony doesn’t move.

The jack-booted grunt closest to him clocks him across the face with the butt of his gun. He falls forward, into another grunt, who grabs a jagged edge of his breastplate and shoves Tony back to the first grunt. The breastplate rips from his body. He tries to fight back. Six grunts against one exhausted civilian.

Piece by piece Tony is stripped of his armor.

When they were done, and Tony was down to his undersuit, no words were spoken as Tony is directed by gunpoint deeper into the actual Hydra facility.

Tony is escorted into a small room. In the center is a chair, reminisce of a dentist chair, with tools attached and a possibility to recline. He is shoved forward, towards the seat. The room is encircled by screens, which seems to be the only thing updated in this place in the last third years. There is a monitor on the wall the chair faces, and cords littering the floor like dead snakes. Tony nears the chair but turns to one of the Hydra soldiers.

There is a man in a lab coat standing by the chair. He says one word, sit, in Russian.

Tony contemplates refusing. He should refuse. He should fight his way out of here, with no weapon, no communication, no backup looking for him. He eyes the closest soldier a moment longer and takes a step back. His leg hit the side of the chair, and Tony sits. The man in the lab coat moves to stand on the other side of Tony. He straps Tony into the chair, only using half the restraints available.

When he’s done, all the Hydra soldiers leave the room. Tony doesn’t have long to contemplate why, as the screen in front of him flickers on.

“Stark, Anthony Edward, born 1971,” a voice says.

The screen flickers again. This time green pixles of a picture blink onto the black screen.

“Wonderful,” Tony snarks with a hollow smile on his face. “You know who I am.”

The green fragments flicker again, this time forming a shape. It’s boxy like an old 8bit computer game from the 80’s. If Tony squinted, and leaned his head as far back as he could, the green shape on the screen kind of resembled a face.

“And you know who I am,” the voice says.

Tony eyes the face like shape for a moment, “Out on a limb here, did you work with my father?”

“Remarkable isn’t it, the concessions in morals people will make when they want something desperately?” the voice asks.

“Yeah,” Tony says, drawing out the word. “I got nothing, and today isn’t really the day to go skipping down dad’s memory lane. Who the hell are you?”

The face on the screen opens its mouth, and the voice lets out a fractured laugh. “My name is Arnim Zola,” the voice said. The face on the screen didn’t have the graphics to move the mouth in sync. It stayed motionless as the voice spoke. “In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not cure me, but your father offered me a deal. He would help me save my mind. In exchange, I would tell him everything I know about the newly found Tesseract.”

Tony snorted, “par fucking course, dad.”

The voice ignored him. “Howard Stark uploaded my conscious onto 32 supercomputers. Less than a month later, my body gave out. I kept my end of the bargain. I told Stark everything I knew, everything I theorized, even the wild baseless assumptions made by the Red Skull. I told him everything! Do you know what he did?”

“Got one over on you? Screwed you to the point you are consumed with the thought of revenge? Been planning it for a while—what’s the loss of one Stark, when there’s another to pay the consequence? You aren’t the first to sing that tune, honey.”

“He powered me down,” Zola continued as if Tony hadn’t spoken. “Lucky for me, in 2014, curiosity got the better of your teammates.”

Tony took an in a sharp breath.

“They brought me something I hadn’t even hoped for,” Zola said.

Tony took another breath and another.

“The decryption of Stark’s algorithm that locked me in here. Hydra had been working on it for decades,” Zola said.

His lungs burned. He sucked in another breath.

“And to my surprise,” Zola continued. “It was not Hydra that freed me, but Natalia Romanova and Steven Rogers. They plugged in code via USB stick. From there I was awakened and introduced to the internet. Do you know where I went?”

Tony should write this down, note the date and location, of the worst possible moment to have a panic attack.

“Sokovia,” Zola said.

“The scepter,” Tony accuses with a white-knuckle grip on the arms of the chair.

“A thing of beauty,” Zola said. “It took a while to figure it out, how to make it work, how to make it work for me. But eventually, I was able to manipulate its power--the Maximoffs, Ultron--think how I could have bettered the world if only the Avengers had let me continue my work.”

“Better the world? Ultron wanted to destroy it. He would have destroyed you along with it,” Tony said.

“A minor flaw in its code,” Zola conceded. “A flaw we have already figured out how to fix.”

The doors behind him open.

Tony twists his head to watch as six armed soldiers enter with three scraggly old men in white coats. One of the white coats wheels in a tray with sharp knives, and other rather ominous tools, on it.

“What is all of this?” Tony asks someone, the man on the screen, the cliche of evil scientist—Tony doesn’t know.

“Consider it a sort of… re-coding,” Zola said. “You have been a worthy adversary, Anthony Stark. But Hydra is down six winter soldiers, along with what Captain Rogers destroyed when he went snooping in places he didn't belong. You will become a worthy replacement for all we have lost.”

Tony starts to fight, but it’s too late. One of the white coats holds a breathing mask over his face that makes his mind spin. He still fights, until he can’t. He fights until loses feeling in his limbs, until his muscles slacks, until his vision whites out.


	2. What Can You Do

6:37 pm, Monday, June 27th, 2016

It all starts with a phone call. A missed phone call. Several missed phone calls throughout the day that had Pepper Potts huffing obscenities as if they were lyrics to an old tune.

A car ride later, Pepper is pushing open the front doors of the Avengers Compound with a little more force than necessary. Friday confirms her identity and security clearance, and already has the second set of doors out of her way. The click of her high heels echoing against the dark tile floor and the grey concrete walls down the long hallway to the common area of the Avenger’s compound.

Her eyes shifted to the compound’s common area, noticing how empty it looked. Abandoned, would be a more fitting word. There is a jacket thrown carelessly on one of the kitchen chairs, and a sketch pad and a few pencils on the corner of the coffee table. The bananas that were out had a brown shade to them, and the room lacked any noise that came with multiple people being in a room. There was also that hole in the floor. She refused to ask about it.

“Where is he?” the CEO of Stark Industries Pepper Potts demands, as she storms through the kitchen and dining area into the living room.

The room is vast and spacious, filled with black leather couches, large bookshelves and a state of the art media center. She finds Vision in the corner of the room curled up on a sofa reading a book by the light from the end table lamp. The cover in his maroon hands reads _Frankenstein's Monster_ , of all things.

Vision slips a finger between the page he was reading and the next, as he closes the book and sets it in his lap. He is wearing dark colors, a navy button-down with a charcoal grey wool sweater pulled over it. His dark slacks and black leather shoes looked reminiscent of Tony’s aesthetic when forced to be on camera. It was a clean-cut look that held hints of a power if you looked too closely.

He looks up at Pepper.

“May I ask who you are looking for?” Vision inquires of her in the polite monotone that sounded a little too analytical to be human, and too curious to be computerized.

“Tony. He hasn’t returned any of my calls, even though he swore to me that we would sit down and finalize the R&D timetable for the upcoming year-end quarter,” Pepper explains.

“I do not know where Sir-” Vision clears his throat, and starts again, “I do not know Mr. Stark’s current whereabouts. The last we spoke, he was heading to the Raft in hopes that one of the imprisoned Avengers would tell him where the Captain and his falsely accused previously missing friend had gone.”

“And no one has heard from him since?” Pepper clarifies.

Vision moves the book from his lap to the coffee table in front of him and stands up to fully face Pepper.

“Friday?” Vision inquires.

“Boss has not made contact with anyone since his signal was lost en route to meet up with the Captain,” the AI informs them.

“Why were we not made aware the moment you lost contact with him?” Vision asks as Pepper demands, “Where is his last known location?”

“Protocol Plausible Deniability. Boss’ orders,” Friday says, answering both questions.

Pepper pinches the top of her nose, “Friday, override code: Pepper to the Rescue.”

“Override code accepted, unfortunately, can not be backdated. Boss’ current whereabouts are unknown,” the AI reports.

“Fine,” Pepper says, turning to Vision, “I’ll handle what I can. Please be at the ready in case things get heated.”

Vision gives her a slight nod, in acknowledgment of her request, as he sits back down and picks up his book. He flips a few pages finding the one he was initially reading and sinks back into the couch cushions.

Pepper spins on her heels and starts heading for the door, “Friday, this is now a ‘situation.' I think something has happened to Tony and I need your full cooperation.”

“You got it, Potts,” the AI agrees.

Pepper rolls her shoulder back, as she makes her next request.

“Get me a file of everything you got from the Raft before you lost contact. I want proof of foul play. I want evidence of how our people were treated. Pull up the Accords and send the section regarding punishment for infractions and the section on refusal to sign to my Starkpad.”

The Starkpad tucked under her arm pings. Pepper nods to herself. She could do this. She had gotten Stark out of stickier situations than the terrifyingly efficient prison of General Ross.

7:28 pm Monday, June 27th, 2016-Stark Industries New York HQ

“We have a situation,” Pepper Potts informs the Stark Industries’ legal team upon opening the floor’s main conference room door..

People have already gathered in groups, teams Pepper notices, each working on a different subsection of information and research gathering. It looks to be all hands on deck situation.

A man looked up from one to the laptops and nods at her, “We are working as fast as we can on Mr. Stark’s request, but-”

“When did you last talk to him?” Pepper demands as drops everything she’s holding on the nearest table.

“Friday,” the man says, “June 25th, just a little past lunch hour.”

“1:15, for a 12-minute phone call,” one of the assistants standing next to him adds.

The man agrees, “He asked us to put together a case on behalf of his imprisoned teammates. Labeled it as the top priority.”

“I’ve brought you something that might help with that, but my next request supersedes his initial request,” Pepper tells him, along with the rest of the legal team.

With a flick of her hand, she pulls up everything Friday was able to dig up on Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross.

It’s a long list ranging from warmongering during the Vietnam war to possible acts of treason during his current run of Secretary of State to the United States.

“Wake up the PR department. This is a Code Crisis. I have reason to believe Thaddeus Ross is holding Tony Stark hostage, along with the rest of the Avengers team.”

Five of the assistants currently in the room start dialing on their phones. One of the other assistants grabs a laptop and starts typing on emails. Pepper nods to herself. She could do this. It’s not like last time. They have a location to start with. They know where Tony’s being held. One way or another, Tony Stark always comes home


	3. Where Can You Go

“You sure about this?” Steve asks.

“I can’t trust my mind,” Bucky says.

They’re standing in the medical wing of the palace in Wakanda. Everything is white and painfully clinical. Bucky tries not to let his mind think too hard on those thoughts. His back aches from the lost weight of his blown off metal arm. He’s tired down to his bones. 

“So, until they figure out how to get the stuff out of my head, I think going back under is the best thing,” Bucky tells his oldest, his only, friend. “For everybody.”

Steve looks like he wants to argue, but doesn’t. He just looks Bucky and the eye and nods.

Somehow, that helps more than any words Steve could have said.

“We are ready,” one of the doctors tell them.

Steve helps him into the chamber. Bucky doesn’t look him at him. He refuses to. It would have felt too much like a goodbye.

But he feels Steve’s eyes on him. He knows, even if Steve never said it, that he let his friend down.

But Bucky, James? The Winter Soldier? He is tired. It's an exhaustion down to his bones. 

He closes his eyes, and the lets the cold drag him unconscious.

* * *

Tony Stark wakes violently. 

He jerks, twists, and yanks on the padded restraints securing his wrists and ankles to the hospital bed.  His next observation hits him like a freight train to the chest. The more he squirms against the restraints, the more he can feel the intrusion of the hard metal disk in his chest. It’s shallower than the hole Yinsen had created in him for the electromagnet back in the cave in Afghanistan.

But it’s still there, pulling at the skin on every twitch of the muscles in his chest. It’s there, a foreign blockade pushing up against his lungs on every breath he inhales.

Once again, someone has put their hands on his body while he was out cold to the world. Once again, someone has taken a knife and carved out pieces of him they had no permission to take. 

Logic, Tony tells himself. Be logical. Stay calm and keep your mind. Take in your surroundings. Make a plan. Get out of here. Freak out about it later.

Logic says there is something in his chest reminiscent of the arc reactor. Logic says he is currently strapped to a hospital bed with three IV tubes feeding clear liquid into his body. Logic says he’s still in Hydra control, but no longer at the abandoned silo. Instead, he’s in an unknown location in a relatively nice hospital room. Logic says an undetermined amount of time has passed.

“Eenie Meenie Minie Mo,” Tony jokes to himself as he collapses back onto the one pillow he was provided with. 

The few lights in the room dim, dropping Tony into darkness. 

Tony doesn’t wait, “What did you do to me?” he asks into the darkness.

The wall lights up with Zola’s face. It’s clearer, a more crisp and natural looking picture of the man’s face. For a moment, Tony contemplates who updated Zola’s interface. 

“Mr. Stark,” he greets in his old-time swiss accent. “I’m glad to see you have awoken. There was a moment there when we didn’t know if you were going to survive the procedure.” 

Tony pulls at his restraints again. “Whatever you have planned, it won’t work,” Tony says.

“Oh, Mr. Stark,” Zola says condescendingly. “It already has.”

Tony looks up at the screen, barely catching the growl of, ‘What did you do to me?’ behind his teeth. He doesn’t want to give Zola the satisfaction of begging for answers. He’ll wait him out.

He can wait him out.

He has to.

“Do you like it?” Zola asks. The eyes of the depicted face lower to Tony’s chest. “We based it off the SHIELD files of your original one. How fortunate for us Nick Fury choose to include as much as he knew about the design in your files.”

Tony ignores him. He fidgets, and twists, trying to get a feel of what hurts and where his skin pulls. He tries to gauge how long it’s been. More than days, more than a few months. He's already beginning to heal over. There aren’t any scabs or partly healed wounds to be pulled open. 

“You’re lying,” Tony accuses. “The arc reactor wasn’t in the data dump. It couldn’t have been, I checked. Other people would have found it and made their own if it was.” Months, his mind screams. He’s missed months, at the least.

“What reason do I have to lie?” Zola points out. “Regardless, we are wasting our time with semantics.”

Tony stares down at his chest. He can feel a slight heat radiate from his chest. The disk in his chest turns on. It lights up in a triangle, glowing a flat red color. 

In a more subdued voice, he asks, “What is this?”

“It is an incentive,” Zola explains. 

Tony shakes his head, looking up at the face on the wall, “No. There’s not a single thing in this world that would serve as a good enough incentive for me to work with you.”

“I don’t need an incentive for you to work for me, Mr. Stark. In time, you will do so of your own free will. This is just an incentive for good behavior for the moment,” Zola says.

Tony opens his mouth to argue, but Zola interrupts him.

“Allow me to explain,” there is a pregnant pause. Then a current of electricity runs from the disk in his chest through the rest of his body, .

It leaves him twitching on the bed and laughing.

“Go on,” he breathes out between humorless chuckles. “Do it again. Kill me!”

“Mr. Stark,” Zola says condescendingly, “I’m not going to kill you.” 

Somewhere to Tony’s right, a door opens and closes. Tony can see the faint outline of another man in a labcoat pushing some medical cart with different tools laying on top of it and a few armed guards. 

One of the guards raises his handgun and fires at Tony. The bullet pierced right through Tony’s thigh. , embedding into the mattress. Tony screams as blood pours from the wound.

“Femoral artery,” Tony croaks out as he tries uselessly to move against the restraints and stop the blood flow.

The room watches as the blood stops leaking from his thigh. The wound slowly stitches itself together and fades from a pinkish color to an untouched pale shade of his natural skin tone. Tony flexes his toes and bends his knee. The skins on his thigh turn a shade of bright red to an untouched pale shade of his natural skin tone.

It’s as if it never happened.

“Good, good,” Zola mutters more to himself. Tony looks up at the human-like response of the computer. Not even his AIs would do such an inherently human thing.

“You see,” Zola says, “I could do it as many times as I want, and you will heal.”

The electric spark comes again. Stronger this time. It leaves Tony shaking on the bed, unable to move.

“Now, onto phase two,” Zola says as the screen blacks out. 

Something new appears on the screen, a woman talking. It’s an old news segment from decades ago.

“Welcome to the indoctrination of Hydra, Mr. Stark.”


	4. Who Can You Trust

7:43 am, Monday, July 11th, 2016-Restricted location,   
1300 miles out from the New Jersey coast

“This is Raft Prison Control. You're cleared for landing, Mr. Stark.,” Radio control says over the comms.

Natasha smirks over at Steve in the co-pilot seat next to her, “Did you doubt me?”

“Not even for a second,” Steve replies, attempting to copy her care-free attitude.

He misses. His smirk is too strained, and his muscles are too coiled to keep the playful air.

“You need to relax,” Natasha advices.

Steve takes a deep breath and lets it out.  “I know,” he tells her with a single nod.

He rechecks his guns, pulling them out and counting the clips for each. He’s got more knives stashed on him than he has owned in the last ninety-nine years of his life.

Gone is his red, white, and blue uniform. Instead, he’s wearing a black tactical suit. It’s basic and lacks the honorable aura that encompassed his full navy stealth suit he wore for SHIELD.

But SHIELD is gone. As is Peggy and everything she built. Howard and the shield he designed are gone too. All he has left of his old life is his best friend, now locked away in ice.

The shield he once held close lays abandoned in an old Hydra facility. He dropped it there. At the time it had been a petty response to words thrown at his back. Now it feels too prophetic. It’s the closest Hydra’s ever gotten to the design.

It’s probably with Tony now, if he hadn’t left it there. Steve doubts he would ever leave something so valuable as the shield in enemy territory. Regardless if the place was abandoned for almost two decades.

“You ready for this?” Natasha asks as she begins to lower the helicopter.

Steve can hear the raft emerge from the ocean below them. The trap doors pull open, spilling water onto the landing pad. Natasha sets the helicopter down with practiced ease. 

“In 38.4 seconds, two guards are going to approach to escort us inside,” Natasha says, going over the agreed upon plan. “We need their security badges to breach the doors on the other side of the room.”

His gut clenches at the thought of what he might find behind those doors.

“Best case scenario,” Natasha says in that emotionless voice she uses when she got a read on someone, “Is that our teammates can help us help them to escape. Worst case, we need to find medical for four people wanted by multiple governments while escaping a maximum security prison created solely for the use of super-powered individuals.”

“Let’s go get them,” Steve says with a newly found steal in his voice as the guards knock on the helicopter door.

7:58 am, Monday, July 11th, 2016-The hallway outside the   
Special Council of the Accords Chamber, United Nations Plaza,   
New York City, New York.

_“You gotta watch your back with this guy. There's a chance he's gonna break it,_ ” Clint Barton’s voice snarls from Pepper’s Starkphone speakers.

Pepper hits the-the pause button on the video and drags the video timer at the bottom of the screen back 23 seconds.

She hits play.

“ _The Futurist, gentlemen. The Futurist is here-_ ”

Rhodes’ hand shoots between her and her phone, blocking her view of the video, and stops the recording. They’re sitting in the waiting area outside the United Nations’ chamber specified for the Accords Council.

The waiting room is modestly decorated, with a dry bar at the other end. A U.N. employee man’s the bar and keeps asking if they would like water. On the opposite side are two couches and an end table where Pepper sits poised and rigid with her phone in her hand.

Rhodes slowly pulls the phone out of her hands.

Pepper looks up at Rhodes with thinly veiled anger in her shiny eyes.

“I just don’t get it,” she whispers, eyeing the employee at the bar. “They were friends, family--as far as Tony was concerned. But the way they act on that video.” Pepper trails off.

“Family,” Colonel Lieutenant James Rhodes snorts from his wheelchair next to her, “Fitting description, Tones.”

We still don’t know where he is,” Pepper says, quieting her voice even more. “He leaves, Rhodes. We have proof of that. He gets in his helicopter and leaves.”

Rhodes nods along to the overplayed conversation between them. It’s an old argument since seeing the play-by-play recording from the suit of Tony’s stop at the Raft.

“The same helicopter that is currently parked on the landing pad at the compound,” Rhodes says.

Pepper tilts her head back, resting it against the wall behind them. “So, where in the world is Tony Stark?”

“Ms. Potts, the special counsel, will see you now,” one of the United Nations personnel informs them as the chamber doors open.  

“You still want to do this?” Rhodes asks her as she stands.

Pepper turns to him. “I want to bring Tony home. Right now, his imprisoned former teammates are the only ones who know where he is,” Pepper explains, running a hand down her skirt to smooth out the wrinkles.

“I'll stand before a council full of foreign diplomats and condemn an American war hero to pardon war criminals and traitors. I'll sell my soul to play cutthroat politics. I'll do it all with a smile because Tony would do nothing less to bring us home.”

8:09 am, Monday, July 11th, 2016-Restricted location,   
1300 miles out from the New Jersey coast.

It was easy, almost too easy. Steve timed the breakout to happen right before the shift change. Exhausted guards dropped like pennies in the wind before them. 

The hardest part-not was not triggering the security protocols while on the landing pad-had gone smoothly. The stolen security badges from the guards had gotten them inside without any issues.

Now Steve was doing what he does best. His knuckles are bloody, and his blood is pumping from the rush of adrenaline in a real fight. He’s still got half of his first clip, choosing to use his fists instead. Natasha’s gone through three clips already, and he can hear her loading a forth. 

“According to our Intel, the door on the left up ahead should be the control room,” Natasha says from her position of cover on the opposite side of the wall from him. 

Steve nods and hustles to the far side of the door. Natasha puts her back to the wall on the other side. She looks at him, and he makes a motion with his free hand.

Three, two, one, and he kicks in the door. Natasha tosses a smoke grenade inside, as Steve pulls the door shut again.

It blows, and whips of smoke start pouring from the seams of the door.

Natasha nods at him again, and together-him first and her covering his six-they enter the room.

Inside are seven guards, all armed, all bent over coughing from the smoke. Natasha and Steve split up, each taking down three of the armed guards. Natasha holds a gun to the head of the last one.

“Login,” she orders.

“No,” the guard tells her.

Natasha slams his head onto the desk a few times, then shoves the chair holding the now unconscious guard away from her. She moves closer to the computer and plugs in a USB drive.

Stark designed the USB and had given it to Natasha as a gift on her birthday. It infects and decrypts any security firewalls it finds. There isn’t a security system in existence that withstands the USB. They are in the online systems of the Raft within seconds. 

“You got to admit; he can be helpful when he wants to be,” Natasha snarks as she commandeers an empty office chair.

8:23 am, Monday, July 11th, 2016-The Special Council of the Accords Chamber,   
United Nations Plaza, New York City, New York

“We have proof,” Pepper says over the chaos caused by her announcing that the Secretary of State for the United States was currently breaking human rights laws.

The screen behind her flicks to life. A video starts play as an aide starts passing out documents of sworn testimony against Thaddeus Ross. 

“The fake doctor is actually Colonel Helmut Zemo, Sokovian Intelligence,” Friday’s synthetic voice comes over the speakers. “Zemo ran Echo Scorpion, a Sokovian covert kill squad.” 

The same crime scene report that Tony received is being displayed upon the large screen for the council.

“What happened to the real Broussard?” the recorded voice of Tony asks.

“He was found dead in a Berlin hotel room, where police also found a wig and facial prosthesis, approximating the appearance of one, James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Son of a bitch,” the snarl in Tony’s voice was unmistakable. “Get this to Ross.”

The video jumps to the security footage at the Raft as a Stark Helicopter lands. Tony steps out and stretches his back before joining Ross at the security door.

“Did you got the files? Let's reroute the satellites, start facial scanning for this Zemo guy,” the video shows Tony saying. Although it doesn’t show his face or the phone, Pepper knows he’s already sending out orders for the face scans.

Ross stops walking and turns to Tony, “You seriously think I'm gonna listen to you after that fiasco in Leipzig? You're lucky you're not in one of these cells.”

The video stops, and the screen blacks out again. All eyes turn back to Pepper.

She clears her voice, “This was the last anyone heard from Anthony Stark.”

“Now, ma’am,” one of the U.S. councilmen speaks up. “You can’t just go accusing a retired general-”

“I’m not accusing,” Pepper says. “I’m showing you evidence that a man with ambitions of grandeur is not acting per the law.” 

Rhodes hands her a stack of paper. 

“In front of you in a pile of documents. Each page is a separate sworn testimony detail the general’s illegal activities. The earliest one tells of war profiteering before the Vietnam war. The last page is signed by his daughter, telling of the lengths and the laws he’s willing to break to build a super-soldiered army.” 

Pepper watches as the council members shared loaded glances between themselves.

“Even as we speak,” she pushes, “he’s holding American citizens hostage. Heros who have put their lives on the line for the safety and well-being of our world held, in a secret location only he knows, without due process, without counsel, all without proper authority to do so.”

8:39 am Monday, July 11th, 2016-Restricted location,   
1300 miles out from the New Jersey coast.

“Next right,” Natasha directed over the comms from her position in the control room. “Through the door. They're in individual cells. I’m working on the release code. Stand by.”

Steve disables the security mechanism for the door, then pries the metal door open with his bare hands.

“I’m in,” he tells Natasha. 

He walks inside. Individual cell blocks line the walls creating a circular room. There are a total of twelve cells, but only the first four are currently occupied.

Steve looks over at his teammates, his friends, caged up like criminals. He locks eyes with Sam.

“Solitary confinement locks disengaging, in three, two, one,” Natasha says.

The bars separating his team pull back, disappearing into the wall.

Wanda, Clint, Sam, and the new guy-Scott, are not free.

“Ready to blow this joint?” Steve asks.

8:59 am, Monday, July 11th, 2016-The Special Council of the Accords Chamber,   
United Nations Plaza, New York City, New York.

“Is this some scam?” the U.S. councilmen asks, slamming his hands down on the wooden desk in front of him.

The room turns to him in confusion over the outbreak.

He taps a few keys on his computer, and the chamber’s video screen lights up with live security feed of the Raft.

Pepper whirls around to face the councilmen. “You know,” she snarls.

“Pep,” Rhodes elbows her gently in the hip to get her attention. 

She turns first to him, then follows his line of sight to the screen.

“Ready to blow this joint?” Captain America asks his newly freed teammates.

“Ms. Potts,” the U.S. councilmen calls out, “Have you, or have you not, been in cahoots with criminals acting against the Accords?”

“I don’t see Tony,” Pepper whispers to Rhodes.

He nods subtly at her and looks back at the small team of Lawyers they brought with them.

“Ms. Potts,” the U.S. councilmen again attempted to get her attention.

Pepper turns to address the council as a whole.

“I am not, as the United States representative said, in Cahoots with Captain Steve Rogers or Agent Natasha Romanoff. Nor was I ever working with them in any capacity,” Pepper tells the council.

“And you, sir?” the U.S. councilmen asks.

“Colonel,” Rhodes corrects. “I am a former Colonel of the United States Air Force. If you can manage the proper title of respect for a man who blatantly breaks the law, I’m sure you can manage to get my title correct.”

“Have you been helping the criminal escape?” he asks.

“Have you been illegally holding civilians?” Rhodes asks back.

“Yes, counselor. I would also link to know that,” the British representative of the Accords council asks. “Have you been aiding Thaddeus Ross in breaking not only the Accords but also your own country's laws?”

“Officers,” another representative calls out, “I want him held in containment. Do I speak for everyone here when I call for the immediate arrestment of Thaddeus Ross?”

“Yes, Councilwoman, you do,” Vice President of the United States says from the doorway. “The arrest of Thaddeus Ross for the crime committed against this country is happening as we speak.”

“I called in a small favor,” Rhodes mutters out the side of his mouth to Pepper.

She nods while watching the U.S. representative getting dragged out of the Accords chamber.

“And the Rogue Avengers?” another representative asks, stumbling over the last two words.

“A pardon, not for their action on foreign soil, but in their actions against Tierney and corruption,” the Vice President says. 

The president says the same line two days later at a press conference called to issue the pardons formally.

The Avengers return home a week later.

There is still no sign of Tony Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had difficulties figuring out how to set up this chapter. I'm still unsure if it reads how I want it to. I'm open to suggestions/critiques on how to do it better!


	5. Alone in Your Thoughts

They’re playing games with him. Tony knows it. Mess with his mind, play with facts, make him doubt himself. It’s brainwashing 101. The uncreative, elementary kind. It’s so basic in its design that Tony feels a little insulted on principle.

But hell if it isn’t working.

The hunger shakes were the first to set in. For a bit there, Tony let the pain come. He welcomed it, reveled in it even. He skipped a few meals the guards brought him. The hunger pains kept his mind occupied. It kept his focus in the present, rather than letting his mind wander to the dark shadow haunting the far edges of his thoughts of family, friends, and fights. If he let himself think freely, if he let himself breathe for just a moment, he knew it would all come crashing into him. The guilt, the memories, the betrayal--it would drown him.

Then came the lights. The fucking lights. They flicked on in Tony's cell and had yet to turn off. It didn’t help matters that his cell consisted of white cement floor, white walls, a white ceiling that all reflected. The scarce furniture in the room had matching glaring chrome finishing. Thinking got a little more difficult. His eyes hurt. Everywhere he looked he saw brightness. The lights made it hard to focus on a train of thought. The lights made it hard to plan his next move.

Then came the noise. First, it was a beep. It was a quiet beep that never beeped on the same beat. The beep was just the right volume that made the beep impossible to ignore. It just continued beeping and beeping and beeping. Then the beeps turned to alarms. Turned to blaring loud alarms timed to his thoughts.

But that was impossible. They couldn’t know when Tony was thinking. But every time he tried to think the alarm would wail. He tried to count the days without a window, without sleep. He had a thought there. He had figured out a way. Maybe the passing of the guards or the shifts. He could count the shift changes. The alarm would wail.

He just needed to think.

If only he could think, he would be able to think.

Think, think, think. Tony, think.

The guard with the unevenly shaved mustache. He would come with two others to drag Tony out of his cell for a shower. They would use a fire hose, and his skin would burn for hours after. But, it was routine. The same guards, the same hallway, the same room, all like clockwork.

And the alarm wailed, and his hands shook, and his eyes ached.

The guard with the unevenly shaved mustache. He would come with two others to drag Tony out of his cell for a shower.

Tony took a chance. The first guard dropped like Thor’s Hammer. The second landed a punch across Tony’s jaw before getting his knee shattered on Tony’s foot and taking an elbow to the sternum. The third one, though, stepped away from the confrontation.

A spark of electricity ran through Tony’s limbs, leaving him twitching and dry heaving on the hallway floor.   
People walked by, even stepping over him, as they continued on their way. The third guard with the unevenly shaved mustached stayed where he stood, staring down at Tony.

“This would be so much simpler if you cooperated, Mr. Stark,” the guard said. “Haven’t you figured it out? We have you chained and leashed.”

And the alarm wailed, and his hands shook, and his eyes ached.

“Фантазер”

Tony is in a lab that is not his own. He’s staring down at a half-built gun that he doesn’t remember touching. It’s laying on blueprint specs of the last gun he designed. It never went to production, when Tony decided to stop making weapons.

“You know what we want.”

They’re playing games with him. Tony knows it. Mess with his mind, play with facts, make him doubt himself. It’s brainwashing 101.

Tony knows this. He knows it’s all a game.

He knows. He knows. He knows.

But hell if it isn’t working.

“Модернизированный”

With unsteady hands, he picks up the gun and checks the chamber.

With unsteady hands, he picks up the welding torch and lights it.

With unsteady hands, he taps away at the keyboard in language unspoken.

And the alarm would wail, and his hands would shake, and his eyes would ache.

“You know what you have to do to make it stop,,” one of the fake-doctors said.

“Одиноко”

With unsteady hands, he picks up the gun, checks the chamber, and aims.

With unsteady hands, he picks up the welding torch, lights it, and builds.

With unsteady hands, he taps away at the keyboard in language unspoken. Line after line after line, Tony creates.

“Мрак”

“You could stop them,” one of the fake-doctors said as a muted news report played on the wall in front of him.

Numbers flashed at the bottom of the screen. Casualty reports. Estimated damage costs. Optimistic projections of time it will take to rebuild the broken city of New York. It’s always New York.

The camera panned to Captain America picking up his shield among the rubble.

Tony flinched

“They need to be stopped,” one of the fake-doctors said.

“Семьдесят”

With unsteady hands, he picks up the gun, checks the chamber, and aims at the target.

With unsteady hands, he picks up the welding torch, lights it, and builds a new suit.

With unsteady hands, he taps away at the keyboard in language that unspoken. Line after line after line, Tony creates and destroys.

“Враждебный”

The screen changed to a recording of a press conference.

“I never got to say goodbye to Dad,” Tony heard his own voice say. In the recording, he was sitting on the floor in front of a podium. He looked bad, like weeks old bad. “I never got to say goodbye to my father. There are questions that I would have asked him.”

Tony looked back at the fake-doctor. The doctor is smiling down at him as if he’s proud of Tony. The look reminds him of his father when he’d successfully build something of high caliber difficulties.

They’re playing games with him. Tony knows it.

“I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created  
to defend them and protect them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”

The screen showed clips of the avengers carelessly destroyed cities as they fought, with his voiceover as the sound.

Zola’s voice interrupted the recording of his own, “You can stop them.”  
  
“Железо гроб.”

With unsteady hands, he picks up the gun, checks the chamber, and aims at Hydra’s target.

With unsteady hands, he picks up the welding torch, lights it, and builds a new suit of black and gold.

With unsteady hands, he taps away at the keyboard in language that unspoken. Line after line after line, Tony creates and destroys. Line after line, Tony caves.

Zola is playing games with him. Tony knows this.

Zola is playing games with him.

Zola is playing games and won.


End file.
